Tuesday, November 29, 2011

Today's Gratitude Item: That those early morning Hebrew lessons I had back when I was a child were not wasted. It turns out that being able to read / decipher Hebrew can be useful when music files for Israeli dance arrive with the names all in Hebrew (sans vowels)! Said files need to be renamed for quick, easy ipod access.

Monday, November 28, 2011

Today's Gratitude Item:Vetkoek Dag. As in all the South African teachers at school met for a lovely lunch which included some traditional favourites. Best of all, my job was simply to bring along plates and cups :)

Sunday, November 27, 2011

Today's Gratitude Item: That my WACOM table its working again. I turned on my machine today and whilst the lights were on, the tablet was not functioning. After a brief panic-search (as in panic, then search), I downloaded a new driver and this fixed the problem. In fact, it appears to be better than ever. Needless to say, being deprived of said tablet for even a short period of time was decidedly uncomfortable.

Thursday, November 24, 2011

Today's Gratitude Item: That yesterday we had fine weather for our beach trip. All of our 8th graders get to visit the local rocky shore (its a 10 minute walk from school maximum) at various times this week. The aim is to count critters at high tide, mid tide and low tide and draw some comparisons (as in a nice mix of Science and Maths). Anyhow, yesterday we had perfect weather for our excursion. Today's groups were not so lucky with it being both windy and rainy. Lets just say that wind + rain + slippery rocks is not a good mix. Sometimes one takes good weather for granted and days like today become a reminder of how bad things could have been.

Today's Gratitude Item: Learning a new dance from one of our visiting dancers. She was one of the most clear teachers that I have ever seen and this made learning said dance very, very easy. The dance itself has some tricky bits in it and in this case, having a gifted teacher made all the difference. When I grow up, I want to be able to teach like that.

Tuesday, November 22, 2011

Today's Gratitude Item: A great day! You know how sometimes days can be "good" and others can be "great"? Well, today was "great". My "Best Practice" workshop was extremely helpful in that there was a lot of really useful information and I made a number of contacts at other schools. Then on my walk, I found $2.00 and 5 pence. The 5p being foreign currency which was probably dropped by a tourist of some description. Basically, today was a day where nothing went horribly wrong and I had a lot of fun. Can't really ask for more than that.

Monday, November 21, 2011

Today's Gratitude Item: Not having to travel quite so far to go to work tomorrow. I'm at a Professional Development "thing" which means spending the day in a conference type environment instead of going to school. Hopefully the day will be interesting and useful.

Friday, November 18, 2011

Today's Gratitude Item: Managing to coax some information out of the school database for a colleague. She needed the information so that we can get funding for the Numeracy program we are running and could not get the database to put student's tutor teachers next to the standard "Name" / "DOB" / "Ethnicity" information. After playing around for about 20 minutes I figured out how to do it. Said colleague is very computer literate and getting the database to cooperate was quite a challenge :)

Thursday, November 17, 2011

Today's Gratitude Item: Getting planning documents from a colleague who teaches Metal Tech and being able to adapt those for Information Tech for next year. Lets just say that the planning documents left by my predecessor where unusable (in a very scary way). Happily it should be "all good" for next year. I'm really fortunate to have passionate, supportive colleagues who want to help.

Wednesday, November 16, 2011

Today's Gratitude Item: A fantastic turn out for dance group. Our numbers are currently being swelled by tourists (two visiting dancers makes a big difference to a relatively small group) and tonight was really fun. I got to play chauffeur after class which worked out well as both our tourists are staying in the city centre reasonably close to each other.

Tuesday, November 15, 2011

Today's Gratitude Item: That one of my brighter 9th graders found a quick way of getting data into the software we use to generate graphs and statistics. He did this without any help from me and his solution was far quicker than the way I used to do things. Sometimes when students don't read instructions it can be a good thing!

Sunday, November 13, 2011

Today's Gratitude Item: Getting started on this free database course. So far its been a mix of interesting and frustrating. Having started so late, everything I submit is overdue but the learning is still valid. At least by the end of it I'll have a better idea of how databases work.

Friday, November 11, 2011

Today's Gratitude Item: Getting all my reports typed up and printed out for proofing. I still have mountains of stuff to do in the near future so getting those reports "out of the way" was quite a relief.

Thursday, November 10, 2011

Today's Gratitude Item: Finally getting my request to the NZACDITT google group approved. I think the first request got "lost" (I'm being charitable) but this time it went through which is great as it means being able to access various resources and collaborate with colleagues who also teach Computing / IT.

Today's Gratitude Item: Surviving today! I was exhausted after last night and managed to leave my laptop at home (a really dumb move). I only realised my mistake when I got to school (ie: 35 km away) and going back to retrieve said computer was not an option. Happily all my work was backed up to the school network and there are plenty of available computers which can be used instead of a laptop. Its not quite as convenient and it would have been a nightmare if I had to teach a class but luckily I did not have any junior classes today and I managed to get at least some work done.

Tuesday, November 08, 2011

Today's Gratitude Item: Not having to wear academic regalia / sit on stage at senior prize giving! This 2 and a half hour long ceremony is where we celebrate student achievement and its a great night unless you are stuck up on stage unable to move much. Happily, I was responsible for the Power Point presentation that showed recipient's names so was stationed at the back of the auditorium up in the lighting booth which meant being free to move around / stretch from time to time. Even better, I've been asked to do the same job again next year :)

Today's Gratitude Item: Going out to see a movie. Said movie was for a fund raiser and it was really nice to get out and see a film on the big screen. The actual movie was not all that great but there is something special about watching a film with a bunch of other people who all react in the same way (especially for the scary bits).

Friday, November 04, 2011

Today's Gratitude Item: Only one more session with my senior Maths classes. I can't believe how quickly the year has flown by. I'll still have my junior classes for another month but when the seniors go, theoretically, I should have more time to get things done which will be great.

Today's Gratitude Item: The fact that I have a registered, licensed copy of photoshop at school and that it lets me grab images from .pdf files with minimum effort. Best of all, having used Illustrator and In-Design for some time now, I'm finding photoshop reasonably intuitive.

Wednesday, November 02, 2011

Today's Gratitude Item: That I don't have to mark junior exams or write junior reports. Most of the work for my senior classes is done and its nice to have a bit of breathing space. I get the junior classes that I "lost" back again next week when the seniors leave (they have a brief study break followed by final exams). By that time, their exams should be marked and their reports should be written :)